The bed sheet jerked violently! Suddenly Elbert rose up!

Please welcome guest author F. Keith Davis. Davis is a longtime newspaperman, author, and independent book publisher. His book titles include West Virginia Tough Boys; Images of America: Logan County, WV; After All These Years: The Authorized Biography of the Hoppers; and others. His newest revision is an ebook release of the state bestseller, The Secret Life and Brutal Death of Mamie Thurman, which is available on Apple Books, Barnes & Noble Nook, or Amazon Kindle. Over the years, he has penned articles and features for a number of national magazines, including Wild West Magazine; Goldenseal; Wonderful WV Magazine; and others. Keith and his wife, Cheryl, live in southern West Virginia.

(EDITOR’S NOTE — The frontier days in southern West Virginia were just coming to a close by the time Raymond Chafin was born in 1917, but the territory in and around Cow Creek was still largely backwoods and isolated. Raymond, who later became a acclaimed mountain politician from Logan County, was the firstborn of Elbert and Lucinda Curry Chafin of Barnabus, WV. At the time this story begins, Raymond Chafin was in his late 20s, and his father, Elbert Chafin, had been suffering for several years from prostate cancer. His health was now beginning to fade). 

BARNABUS, W.Va. — It was around 1946, and Elbert Chafin’s health had continued to fail. At this particular juncture, the prostate cancer had taken its toll on his body, and his wife Lucinda decided it was time to “call in the family,” since it was obvious that he didn’t have much time left. 

The curtains were pulled and the lights were turned down low in Elbert’s bedroom. Within an hour or so, everyone began to gather around his bedside, including his son, Raymond Chafin. All awaited the inevitable.

It was years later, in 2002, that Raymond reminisced during an interview about this particularly difficult evening, saying, “Our close family was not particularly a church-going bunch. I remember we did have cousins who believed in baptizing by sprinkling. Others believed you had to be dunked in over your head in a running creek.”  He added that some didn’t think you needed any of that stuff at all. As for our house, we never gave any of it much thought.

“Now that Dad was dying, we had our neighbors send for Rev. M. K. Diamond.” Diamond was a spindly, gray haired old man of God who lived up the holler. “Preacher Diamond was probably the only preacher-man our family knew well, and I guess we thought it was only the right thing to do. A preacher should be with Dad at this final moment!”

Raymond said hefore the preacher could even get to the house, Elbert sighed, grunted loudly, and went limp. “I was devastated, and so was the rest of the family. Mom nervously yanked Dad’s bedsheet over his head. He was gone.”

When Preacher Diamond arrived, the family was still standing around, crying. He stared at Dad’s lifeless body for several minutes, and then shouted, “Everybody! Get on the floor and let’s pray! I SAID PRAY!”

Raymond remembered it being an emotional episode, and added, “Up until that day my brothers and I didn’t put a whole lot of stock in praying. Yet, amidst the drama of this moment, and with ol’ Diamond barking out orders, we dropped to the floor like rocks. We gave it our best. Undoubtedly, Preacher Diamond was praying the loudest. I think we all tried to mimic him as best we could. I’ve not heard such praying like this before, nor since that day. It must have gone on for about 15 minutes or longer.”

While all were praying, Raymond said he’d peek out one eye every few second to see what was happening. All of a sudden, as they were all praying, crying, and shouting, the bed sheet jerked violently! Suddenly Elbert rose up! He leaned over the bed and took one look at everyone in astonishment. He gasped, “What the Sam-Hill are you people doing?” 

“Mom fainted!”

When everything finally settled down, Raymond recalled that they all just stood and stared at Elbert as if he was some kind of ghost. 

When Elbert heard the whole story, he was a bit shook up over it all, too. “Dad felt pretty good after that. Now I’m not saying I really know what happened that day. Yet, I am saying I now believe in the power of prayer!”

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“I suspect Dad lived another year or so after that—passing away at 54 years of age, in 1947,” Raymond recalled. “I was 30 years old then. At Dad’s eventual passing, there was an all-night vigil over the corpse, held at home, which was the custom of the day. Fresh flowers surrounded his rough wood casket, and many attendees stayed throughout the night. The common observance was called ‘staying up with the dead.’”

Not long after Elbert’s passing, Raymond’s wife, Louise, gave birth to a daughter, Margaret, on October 30, 1949. Little Margaret, a tiny newborn with dark eyes and fair skin, would never know her grandpa, except through the colorful stories her father would tell. Margaret helped fill the cavernous hole that remained in Raymond’s heart after losing his father—maybe his best friend in the world.

* * *

(This excerpt, a portion of an interview held with Raymond Chafin in 2002, is from the book, West Virginia Tough Boys, by author F. Keith Davis, published by Guyan Ridge Publishing. For the first time ever, the revised edition of this book will soon be made available on Amazon Kindle, Barnes and Noble Nook, and Apple Books.)